Eileen Heyes

Author * Journalist * Writer in Residence

Adolf Hitler

The name Adolf Hitler has become synonymous with evil. For decades after Hitler's reign as dictator of Germany, those who had served in his Schutzstaffel, or SS, were hunted down and tried. Millions of survivors of Hitler's genocide lived with the haunting memories of their own suffering and of the loved ones who died. The world reeled with the revelation of atrocities committed in the name of Hitler's Third Reich.

How did Germany let itself be led for twelve years by a mass murderer? Why did the world stand by while Europe fell to the Nazis and while millions of Jews and others were tortured and killed? This book takes a hard look at these questions.

Germany's transformation under Hitler's regime was deftly orchestrated, swift, and insidious. Most Germans — and the rest of the world — did not have a full picture of his master plan until it was too late. Even then, many nations remained reluctant to fight another war. The persistence of anti-Semitism in the United States and other countries contributed to Hitler's unchecked rise as well.

In the end, readers are left with the hardest questions of all: Will any nation let another Hitler rise to power? Will the world recognize in time the significance of attacks on a minority group's civil rights? And, most important, what will we collectively do about it?